The paradigm for typical existing Virtual Assistants (VA's) is for different types of virtual assistants to be mutually exclusive. This limitation deters users from seeking to use virtual assistants, because users are forced to go back and forth from voice to some other type of input as they switch between various applications, each of which supports its own mutually exclusive virtual assistant.
For example, in a typical use case for existing virtual assistants, a smartphone user running a virtual assistant application may initiate a session with the virtual assistant by issuing a voice command to order food, such as a pizza. In response to such a command, the default behavior of existing virtual assistants is to perform an Internet search for the requested item (in this example, a pizza). The result of the Internet search would then be delivered to the user, which may permit the user to interact with a website to which a separate, mutually exclusive, virtual assistant application corresponds. A pizza company that is the result of the Internet search, for example, may have its own virtual assistant. To operate that virtual assistant, the user may then have to switch to a type of input other than voice (such as by typing commands), to engage in an interaction with the pizza company's virtual assistant that is fully separate from the user's previous interaction with the first virtual assistant. If the user were then to issue another request to the first virtual assistant for a different sort of service (such as to order a taxi), the user may then have to interact with another Internet search, followed by a separate interaction with another, fully separate, virtual assistant for ordering the taxi.
Because of user experiences such as the foregoing, users are therefore deterred from using conventional virtual assistants as a solution for achieving a variety of different specialized purposes.